


Survivor

by TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel



Category: Jurassic Park (1993)
Genre: Gen, Lex Murphy's POV, Recovery, Trauma, post-Jurassic Park
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 03:05:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5031319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel/pseuds/TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first six months are the worst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Survivor

**Author's Note:**

> _A small, drabble-y thing._

The first six months are the worst.

Six months of screaming nightmares, of sharp teeth and the ground shaking and of a deafening, reverberating roar. Six months of jumping at the slightest sound, of shrieking at unexpected touches, of moments of glaze-eyed terror set off by the most seemingly-innocuous of stimuli. The first time she hears the dog’s claws clicking on the tiles sends Lex into screaming hysterics, while the smell of rain and mud, for years, will take Lex back to Jurassic Park in an instant, back to those moments when the Tyrannosaur had come after them and Lex had first really, truly, believed she was going to _die_.

She has nightmares about being trapped in the kitchen as well, of course; nightmares where either she or Timmy are caught by the raptors, and torn apart before Lex can wake up, chest heaving with every breath, face wet with tears of sheer terror. Every single night, for those first six months, Lex relives those horrible moments when the dinosaurs had come after her.

Timmy seems to have it easier. He’s shaken up, of course, but he seems to get over the shock, the fear and helplessness better than Lex does. Her parents raise the notion of Lex seeing a psychiatrist, once, but Lex shoots down that idea easily enough.

“That’s not going to work,” Lex points out adamantly. “The moment I mention dinosaurs they’ll write me off as crazy.”

Her parents reluctantly agree with her assessment of the situation, and there are no psychiatrists. No matter how much Lex could use one.

The first six months are the worst, because Lex doesn’t know how to cope. She barely remembers the time before Jurassic Park, before the panic and the constant fear; she knows, intellectually, that there was a time when life was easy and relaxed, but the events at Jurassic Park are seared so deeply into her mind that they might as well have overwritten everything else.

Lex goes back to school, and her teachers comment on her inability to concentrate, the way Lex fidgets nervously and hates sitting with her back to the classroom door. Lex’s parents are called into a meeting by a teacher concerned with Lex’s plummeting grades, and Lex ought to be horrified, but she isn’t. She’s too busy trying to survive.

She pesters Timmy for dinosaur facts, learning them off by heart. She doesn’t care what they ate or how long they lived; Lex is concerned with other things.

“How big are they?” she asks. “How fast can they run? Are they meatosauruses, or veggiesauruses? Are they clever? _What hurts them?_ ”

Tim answers as best he can, but he’s three years younger than Lex, and even he doesn’t know everything about dinosaurs.

Eventually, Lex gets out the phonebook, and finds Dr Grant’s number. She calls it.

“Alan Grant speaking,” he says, and for a long moment Lex can’t say anything. She swallows.

“Hello, Dr Grant,” she finally manages. There’s a long silence.

“Who is this?” Dr Grant says finally. There’s something still and careful about his voice.

“Lex,” says Lex, “Lex Murphy. You saved me and Timmy from the – from the–”

And Lex bursts into tears.

“Lex?” Dr Grant sounds alarmed. “Are you okay? Lex?”

“I keep dreaming about it,” Lex sobs. “About the d-dinosaurs, a-and –” She loses coherency, too busy crying.

Dr Grant goes “Easy, easy,” and makes soothing noises over the phone until Lex manages to choke back the sobs. Then he says, “Lex, I want you to listen to me very carefully.”

“I’m listening,” Lex hiccups.

“You don’t have to worry about the dinosaurs,” Dr Grant says, and his voice is firm and reassuring. “They’re still on the island, and they can’t leave. There are no dinosaurs where you are, and there never will be. You’re safe.”

Lex knows in her head that he’s right, but her feelings override what she understands intellectually.

“But what if you’re wrong?” she demands. “What if something happens, and they escape the island?”

Dr Grant is silent for a moment. Then:

“Let me give you my cell phone number,” he says. “Do you have a pen and paper? Write this down.” He gives her the numbers one by one. “If dinosaurs ever do come after you again, you ring this number, and I promise, I will come and get you. Understand?”

Lex nods, even though Dr Grant can’t see the motion. Clings to Dr Grant’s promise like a lifeline. This man saved her from people-eating dinosaurs. Lex trusts him.

“Okay,” she says.

Dr Grant asks her questions after that, about home and about school, and Lex tells him about her inability to sit still and learn, the way she finds herself twitching at every noise, every movement she sees out of the corner of her eye.

“Well,” says Dr Grant gently, and a little uncomfortably, “You went through a terrifying ordeal, Lex. All your survival instincts were woken in a very violent way. It’s going to take time for them to settle down again. Your body needs to learn that your current environment is safe. You’re young – how old are you?”

“Thirteen,” says Lex.

“You’re thirteen,” says Dr Grant, and he sounds a little sad that Lex has gone through so much, at thirteen years old. “You have time to recover. Try not to worry too much about school. Focus on the things that matter in the here and now. Right now, you’re trying to learn how to get through the day, and that doesn’t leave much room for learning other things.”

“That makes sense,” says Lex.

Dr Grant says some more encouraging things, asks how Timmy is doing (and says “Good, good,” when Lex reports that Timmy seems to be doing fine) and eventually, Lex hangs up the phone.

She feels a lot better than she did before she rang him.

Things are easier, after that. Lex focuses on healing, on learning to live again without fear. The nightmares slowly fade away, becoming an occasional, infrequent thing. Lex stops jumping at shadows and flinching at surprises. Even the sound of the dog walking down the tiled hallway in the middle of the night stops being the cause of instant fear.

By this point, she knows almost as much about dinosaurs as Timmy. He’s still fascinated with dinosaurs, despite everything that happened; he seems to regard Jurassic Park as an adventure, these days, and his near-fatal encounter with dinosaurs seems to have only spurred his interest on. He knows more about velociraptors than anyone his age should know. They seem to have replaced Stegosaurus as his favourite dinosaur.

It makes Lex mad at times, the fact that Timmy is so cavalier about what happened. He doesn’t seem to remember things the way Lex does: starkly, with as much clarity as the day they happened. Lex knows that at the time, Timmy was just as frightened as she was. Timmy seems to have forgotten that, though.

Sometimes it makes Lex angry. Other times, she’s glad that he doesn’t have to live with it the way she does. Sometimes she’s even a little envious: it must be nice, she thinks, to recall the most terrifying time of your life as an entertaining escapade, instead of the thing that keeps you up nights.

Eventually, Lex moves on.

She never forgets. But -

_I faced dinosaurs,_ she thinks, _and_ _lived._

**Author's Note:**

> _ETA: To address something mentioned in the comments - Lex is a bit of an unreliable narrator where Timmy is concerned. She's too caught up in her own problems to see his (which are a little different from hers), plus Timmy is putting on a brave face._


End file.
